1 2 - The Oakville Beaver, F rida y A u g u s t 22, 2003 w w w.beachcom berGTA.com gab, grill & grin Principals, V-Ps head to Talisman $50,000 leadership conference By Tim Whitnell SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER The questions have re-surfaced but the head of the Halton District School Board is once again vigorously defend ing the cost and appropriateness of a conference for principals and vice-prin cipals. Like last year at this time, Education Director Dusty Papke is expressing a degree of exasperation with criticism from some quarters of a two-day con ference this week costing taxpayers nearly $50,000. The Wednesday-Friday event is at the Talisman Mountain Resort in Kimberley, Ont., located about two hours north of Halton, just southwest of Collingwood. Last summer, the conference was attended by a group of 160 principals and vice-principals. At that time, Burlington trustee Peggy Russell took the board to task then for a $48,000 expenditure. She argued the gathering would be less expensive if it were held closer to or in Halton. A similar-sized group of school lead ers is scheduled to be at the ski resort for this year's Leadership Capacity and Schools conference, which will be high lighted by a keynote address from industry consultant Linda Lambert on the first day. "It's a framework for learning com munities," Papke said of the gathering. "Our administrators are our leaders in our schools, so that's who we have to get to first. We are looking at leadership development really, eventually among all members of our educational commu nity. "What we are trying to do here is build some of the skills around inquiry and reflection," he added. "Our goal is to become a true learning organization." Guest speaker Lambert is a professor and director for educational leadership at California State U niversity's Hayward campus in San Francisco. Lambert's fee for the one-day talk is $3,500, not including her materials costs. "We use her for a full day and then our senior administration will run the second day of the conference on the same theme," said Papke. "We spend between $700,000$800,000 a year on professional devel opment (PD), so it ($3,500) would come out of our PD account. "That's the daily rate we were able to negotiate with her. That's pretty good. I think that's an extremely economical conference. We couldn't send our peo ple to (other) conferences for that rate." The bulk of the cost of the two-day meeting is for accommodations. Papke said Talisman's off-season summer rate to the board is $148 per person per night with a two-night mini mum. The amount includes meals and taxes. The overall cost of lodgings for 150 principals and vice-principals would be $44,400. 'T h e reason we have gone to Talisman quite frankly is because it is not a luxury resort, as it was described last year (in a newspaper story). "It is a ski resort. It's a very nice ski resort, but it's a ski resort and this is its off-season; there's no one there. We're able to get much better deals quite frankly from them than we can get here." The conference is not an extra cost to the school board, said Papke. It comes out of PD dollars in the principals' and vice-principals' contracts. They get about $300 each per year for that pur pose, he said. "They fund it with their dollars. They could spend that any way they want. That's part of their compensation package." The only condition put on the money is that it be spent on board-approved professional development. If the employee has already spent all or most of their PD money, but wants to attend another related event, they would have to foot the difference themselves, said Papke. He noted the board would likely allow an employee to carry over any unspent PD funds. EN D O F S EA S O N Enjoy the great outdoors in your own backyard with incredible end-of-season savings. 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